Mary Another Way: How Gregory Palamas Grounds Access to Salvation and Hesychasm On the Theotokos

What is the significance of, and upon what ground does Gregory Palamas establish, both his soteriology and his ascetical theology of hesychasm? The answer may come as a surprise.

Gregory Palamas teaches of the blessed virgin Mary: “She alone forms the boundary between created and uncreated nature, and no one can come to God except through her and the mediator born of her, and none of God’s gifts can be bestowed on angels or men except through her. As in the case with lamps on earth constructed of glass or some other transparent material, it is impossible to look at the light or enjoy its rays except through the lamp, so it is beyond the reach of all to look upwards to God or be helped by Him to make progress in any direction, except through the Ever-Virgin, this God-bearing lamp who is truly radiant with divine brightness.” (The Homilies, "On the Entrance into the Temple," 53.37, pg 431; cf. Homily 37.15, 17, 18, pgs 296-297) The relevant portion of Homily 37, "On the Dormition," 37.15 reads: “She alone stands at the border between the created and uncreated nature, and no one can come to God unless he is truly illumined by her, the true lamp of divine radiance.” The relevant portion of Homily 37.17 reads: “... from now on for endless eternity all progress towards the manifestation of divine light, every revelation of divine mysteries, and all forms of spiritual gifts are beyond everyone’s grasp without her.” The relevant portion of Homily 37.18 reads: “So as many as will share in God will do so through her… She is the cause of what preceded her, the protectress of what comes after her, and she procures eternity.” If someone cannot see that the EO has turned Mary into an eternal co-savior and gatekeeper to Jesus, then it is a great wonder, for “no one can come to God unless he is truly illumined by her.” It is not merely "flowery language." The Flowery Language Defense will not work. It is rather purposeful and meant with all sobriety and gravity. The theological notion of her help is also clearly opposed to being reduced to any kind of merely historical sense. She then and now "forms" and "stands at the boundary," and "no one can [presently] come to God unless he is truly illumined by her," and this is so "from now on for endless eternity." Therefore, in the EO conception, apart from her present help no one can approach God, who is Himself the divine light. Without Mary dispensing Christ, one cannot have eternal life, for "she is both the treasury and the treasurer of the riches of the Godhead" (The Homilies, 53.39, pg 432), and it is she who "procures eternity" for you, according to the EO.

In his major homily on the feastday of “The Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple,” Gregory Palamas anchors his Mariology on the canonical hymns of the Orthodox Church. Moreover, his ascetical philosophy of hesychasm is in its turn established on the Theotokos as presented in those hymns. The relationship between these doctrines is an underreported facet of his theology which, in its details, may come across as quite strange both to Evangelical converts to Orthodoxy and to Protestant admirers of Palamas’ theology. The present short study hopes to clarify this relationship.

Unlike the doctrine of the Trinity, which is derived from the immediate data of Scripture, Palamas produced a Mariology that is derived almost entirely from an Eastern hymnography that is itself rooted in a Medieval Byzantine hypertrophic Biblical typology. She is even elevated to a kind of Platonic Idea, as was also shown in the previous study. Presupposed, then, is the Eastern Orthodox theological method of reflection on the Marian hymns, for liturgical Tradition, i.e. the texts of the hymns, are considered to be inspired and bindingly authoritative (analogous to Scripture itself). This fact helps explain elements of both his ascetical theology and his distinctly soteriological brand of Mariology, for the hymns are a kind of deuterocanonical source of further theological reflection and doctrinal assertion, of which Gregory Palamas serves as an almost ideal example for the Eastern Orthodox. 

Gregory states of Mary: “she constructed a new and indescribable way to heaven, which I would call silence of the mind” (Homily 53.59, pg 441). She did this while living in the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem as a very young girl, beginning at three years old. And so, keeping in mind that her living in the Holy of Holies is considered literally true by the Eastern Orthodox, the full paragraph (53.59, pgs 441-442) of the foregoing quote reads (with annotations): 

“The all-pure Virgin threw off those ties [of earthly matters] from the very beginning of her life, and withdrew from people.” She escaped from a blameworthy way of life, and chose to live in solitude out of sight of all, inside the sanctuary [the Holy of Holies in the Temple].”

Not only integrating Mary with monasticism, it also shows the kind of preference given to the monastic lifestyle over that of the householder. Literature praising monasticism over the vocation of the householder is common in Eastern Orthodox literature.

“There, having loosed every bond with material things, shaken off every tie and even risen above sympathy towards her own body, she united her mind with its turning towards itself and attention, and with unceasing holy prayer.”

This somewhat Neoplatonic sentiment, rooted in Dionysian apophatic theology and praxis, Palamas here hints at the kind of method of prayer he advocates as proceeding via sensory transcendence and ceaseless prayer.

“Having become her own mistress by this means, and being established above the jumble of thoughts in all their different guises, and above absolutely every form of being, she constructed a new and indescribable way to heaven, which I would call silence of the mind.”

Here Palamas reveals the Mariological grounding for his entire conception of hesychia, i.e. silence of the mind. Through this method Mary gained total mastery over herself, transcending all thought and all that possesses form, entering absolute formlessness, which is the near aim of Eastern Orthodox hesychasm, its ultimate aim being conceived as a veritable way to heaven, one constructed and established by Mary. 

“Intent upon this silence, she flew high above all created things, saw God’s glory more clearly than Moses, and beheld divine grace, which is not at all within the capacity of men’s senses, but is a gracious and holy sight for spotless souls and minds.” 

Again in a kind of Neoplatonic transcendentalism dressed in Christian language, Mary is conceived as moving beyond the sphere of creation into realms of God’s glory, which emphasizes her actual, non-metaphorical purity possessed from her youth. 

“Partaking of this vision, she became, according to the sacred hymnographers, a radiant cloud of the truly living water, the dawn of the mystical day, and the fiery chariot of the Word.”

Here Gregory cites the authoritative nature of the hymns by which he expounds his Mariology, showing that it certainly served as a ground of theological reflection and a source of doctrine. It seems that, for him, Mariology is a kind of expository reading of the hymns. What is more, it presents Mary as having, by means of her own purity and virtue, via the asceticism of hesychia, having ascended and so became the instigator of the Incarnation.

Gregory states that, “No one was capable of putting an end to this impulse which brings destruction on all men alike, or to the uncheckable rush of our race towards hell” (53.48, pg 436). In other words, standing before the predicament caused by sin, man was helpless. Into that helplessness Mary enters: “When the Holy Virgin Maid heard and understood this, she was filled with pity for humanity and, with the aim of finding a remedy to counteract this great affliction, she resolved at once to turn with her whole mind to God” (53.48, pg 436). Thus, Mary takes it upon herself to find the solution to man’s suffering by focusing all of her attention upon God, and so, “She took it upon herself to represent us, to constrain Him who is above compulsion, and quickly draw Him towards us, that He might remove the curse from among us” (53.48, pg 436). Thus Mary is the one who becomes the universal representative of mankind, its very ambassador, the one who savingly brings God the Son down to earth. Gregory continues: “Having thought over these things so relevant to her, the Virgin full of grace interceded for all humanity in an amazing way defying description” (53.49, pg 436). 

Through her own powers of contemplation and thought, the blessed Virgin sought “to converse persuasively and honestly with God, to whom she came as a self-appointed ambassador, or rather as one ordained by Him” (53.49, pg 436). In other words, mystically coterminous, Mary appointed herself through God’s mystical appointment of her to honestly persuade God to have mercy upon mankind. And so, sitting alone in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, “she eagerly examined every type of virtue, those proclaimed in the law and those discovered by reason” (53.49, pg 436) in order that she might effect some way of escape, even superior to that revealed by God in the Torah, and, “Since the Virgin recognized that nothing revealed by men before her time went this far, she inaugurated something better and more perfect” (53.49, pg 436), and since she had looked into the Law of God itself what she inaugurated was better, according to Palamas, than anything God had previously revealed. 

Now, Christ having been reduced almost to an instrument of Mary’s salvation of the world, what He has to do with any of this becomes theologically less and less clear for of Mary it is said, “She invented, put into practice, and handed down to those who came after her, a practice higher than any vision, and a vision as far superior to that which was formerly so highly acclaimed as the truth is superior to imagination” (53.49, pg 436). Recall that Gregory has called this “a new and indescribable way to heaven,” for tragically Gregory proceeds to speak not of the Gospel of Christ, but of hesychia. In fact, this is how one is enabled “to taste those good things to come, to stand with angels and become a citizen of heaven” (53.50, pg 436). In other words, Gregory is conceiving of hesychia as a parallel path to heaven through Mary! 

Deeply confusing justification with sanctification, whenever someone hears an Eastern Orthodox theologian speak of “salvation as theosis,” one must understand not only just how Mariological this is according to Gregory Palamas, but also how much ascetical discipline is implied by him as well. As Palamas declares:

“It is absolutely impossible, however, to truly encounter God unless, in addition to being cleansed, we go outside, or rather beyond ourselves, leaving behind everything perceptible to our senses, together with our ability to perceive, and being lifted up above thoughts, reason, and every kind of knowledge, above even the mind itself, and wholly given over to the energy of spiritual perception, which Solomon calls divine awareness, we attain to that unknowing which lies beyond knowledge.” (53.51, pg 437)

That the foregoing is a theologia gloriae is unmistakable, and clearly speaks about the Theotokos as supplying a way to God. She has become a principle of hidden, mystical gnosis, a Platonic Idea, as when Gregory Palamas declares of her:

“The other aspect of the Virgin, however, superior to what we have recounted, is entirely knowledge (γνῶσις ἅπαν ἐστί), through which we may search out natural principles and, as far as lies within our grasp, contemplate the analogies, figures and quantities of the soul and things which are inseparably separable from matter.” (53.50, pg 437)

Notice that the literary analogies, figures, and quantities are not given by Gregory to soften anything said about Mary, but instead as means of magnifying the centrality of her role and the totality of her power. The Flowery Language Defense is therefore groundless. That which is sung in the Marian feasts is decidedly not intended as pious devotional hyperbole, but as a grammar for theological intensification. And so, the blessed Virgin as a young child, living a “divine way of life” (53.54, pgs 438-39) literally in the Holy of Holies, as a necessary consequence of her being an ambassador on behalf of all mankind, “found that holy stillness was her guide: stillness, in which the mind and the world stand still” (53.52, pg 437). And this stillness was “forgetfulness of the things below, initiation into the things above, the laying aside of ideas for something better. This is true activity… the vision of God, which is the only proof of a soul in good health” (53.52, 437-38). 

Thus Gregory Palamas grounds his entire theory and practice of hesychia on Mary as an historical example, a Biblical type, and a living transcendental reality for how to apophatically ascend on the Marian way to God. Far, then, from being a passive instrument through which God took flesh upon Himself, she is rather the heroic agent who saves mankind through her own “self-appointed” ambassadorship and intercession. By means of her own boldness she heroically fashioned Jesus in her womb for the sake of mankind.

“She alone of all mankind throughout the ages was initiated into the highest mysteries by these divine visions, was united in this way with God, and became like Him. She then accomplished the super-human role of intercessor on our behalf, and brought it to perfection through herself, not just acquiring the exaltation of mind that lies beyond reason, but using it for the sake of us all, and achieving this great and surpassingly great deed by means of her boldness towards God.” (53.61, pgs 442-43)

In this way all passivity must be excluded from how her role is conceived as saving mankind. The grace she received was one by which she stood as the instigator, if not the accomplisher, of salvation, delivering the world by heroically delivering the Savior to it. She did not merely receive the Word in her womb by a vertically descending act of God through her willingness as a simple handmaiden (as the Scriptures would have it). Rather, she ascended, interceded, and boldly persuaded God through her own compassion and the purity of her person. She conceived Him in the womb, she caused Him to be fashioned therein. It was the blessed Mother of God who was “linking man’s nature to the divine nature and rendering it, as it were, equally divine” (53.63, pg 443).

Now, it is often just here where an Eastern Orthodox apologist will object and lay claim to the fact that no saint is individually authoritative, which technically is true. The strategic use of this claim, however, is also often an apologetic ruse through which, on the one hand, the Orthodox will simultaneously believe, confess, and teach their Marian theology by means of such saint’s explanations, claiming in general the authoritative nature of “the mind of the Fathers,” while, on the other hand, also disavow almost any uncomfortable Patristic conclusion. In other words, as if simultaneously believing all of it and none of it, a hymn can become “poetry” whenever “poetry” is a useful defense, or it can become just the singular pious opinion of this or that Father about that hymn whenever that is a useful defense.

Ironically, the foregoing strategy is this very thing Eastern Orthodox speciously accuse confessional Protestants of doing, for Protestants can be found citing theologians like Luther and Calvin as “relative authorities” while not adhering to all that they say. The reason this objection is specious is because, unlike the Orthodox, Protestants disavow that any authority functions equal to or alongside Scripture, but that all are subordinate and subject to Scripture. The liturgical hymns of the Eastern Orthodox, on the contrary, do function as a kind of plenary authority together with the Bible, the Councils, and “the holy Fathers.” In other words, for confessional Protestantism there is implicit latitude to openly differ, say, from a Luther or a Calvin than there is for an Orthodox to openly differ from Gregory Palamas.

That being said, Gregory Palamas is particularly authoritative, especially as regards his ascetical theology, due to the multiple councils in the Eastern Orthodox Church which sided with, defended, and canonized his thoughts on the subject. Therefore, what is said above stands in many ways as precisely what the Eastern Orthodox must confess about Mary. Palamas has ascribed soteriological agency to her, elevated her to a cosmic savior principle, and even grounded the entire ascetical theology which characterizes Eastern Orthodoxy, that of hesychasm, on her. 

-The Reformed Ninja